Gakuen Babysitters – 05

So here’s some free advice for anyone who’s wondering about the best environment in which to write a blog post. Having a flight in six hours and needing sleep, finding out your website’s admin panel is down and spending two hours with your host’s support trying to get it working, leaving for the airport at 530 AM only to find when you get there that your flight is delayed and you’re missing your connection, causing you to be four hours late getting home is not recommended. I’d skip that and try something different.

So, bleary-eyed greeting from the terminal at Louis Armstrong International Airport.

If there’s ever a time when you need a series from the “soothing-healing” side of the ledger, this would be it – though I kind of wish now that I’d waited and watched this episode of Gakuen Babysitters this morning, when I really needed it. It was another good one, as the series stays safely in its comfort zone of gently quirky humor while slowly expanding out its cast and thematic breadth. The subject of romance is hardly the centerpiece of this series, but it certainly has to be woven into the fabric of any coming-of-age story.

This all gets Ryuuichi thinking about love – romantic love, that is. He’s at the age where such concerns are normally asserting their dominance, but Ryuu has never felt the stirrings of love – and honestly, with as much as he now has to worry about who has time? It’s more subtle confirmation that Ryuu is very much not just aware that he’s missing out on a normal adolescence, but troubled by it. It doesn’t seem like there’s anything percolating between he and Inomata-san (though Ushimari is worried) but the heart wants what it wants, so we’ll see where the story takes this theme.

Meanwhile, a feud is brewing between Taka and Kirin, who’s abandoned the super sentai game (any good one requires 5, so this is a problem – no Pink) in favor of studying to become a witch. Despite the best peacemaking efforts of Kotarou (“No fight!”) this soon grows into open warfare, with Ryuu-kun caught in the middle. Should “adults” allow kids to have their dreams, as Ryuu believes, or disabuse them and bring them back to reality as Hayato-kun says? It’s an interesting question, perhaps more a matter of timing than anything else.

Ryuuichi eventually decides to do what he can to help Kirin “prove” to Taka that witches are real (though not with Inomata’s Salem Witch Trial tomes) but fate intervenes when she tries to take matters into her own hands. I’m not sure if the takeaway is as simple as Ryuu thinks – “I should have told her the truth right away” – but it’s a harsh reminder that fantasy has its limits. It’s also a harsh reminder that Usaida-san may not be an especially good babysitter – I mean, seriously, Man? The napping on the job is one thing, but you really need to life your game when it comes to paying attention…

As much as I love the characters and at this point they are the only reason why I’m still watching this anime- I feel like the episode-multi-plots is too ambitious, this episode was all over the place. Also, I feel like Ryuu’s perspective in this episode felt strange for a teenage boy to have (kinda fits for someone more grown and with life experience), and lastly the pacing of the episode… what was this episode all about? Age-Gap? Witches?

I don’t see that. It’s a slice of life set in the school, and a coming of age story. It’s going to be episodic – and episodic seems to be more prevalent in anime these days than ever anyway. I’m not sure why that should be an issue for most viewers.

Also, is really unusual for a 16 year-old to wonder why he’s never fallen in love? It doesn’t seem odd to me.

I’m just noting what most people around me already mentioned, and they all like different things so it’s not just one faction. “why he’s never fallen in love?” that’s not the off-part; his views over the age-gap felt off.

Well, the fact that he took the time to address the issue from an informed perspective and highlighted on the possible outcomes and the overall measures of the situation did feel mature and that of an experienced person not some teenage boy who is trying to figure things out for the first time. That what threw me off here personally.

While I think I get what you mean generally, I didn’t really find it that off. Though Ryuu is still just a teenage boy, given he’s been put in positions of responsibility for a while now (first generally with looking after Kotaro, then later on from being in the Babysitter Club), it makes sense that he might have a slightly more mature approach to some matters, as a lot of responsibility at a young age can make one grow up quickly.
Also he kind of strikes me as a contemplative, thoughtful sort of person anyway, so combining his responsibility with that, I don’t think it’s so surprising that he might have views slightly different to that of the so-called average teen.

@Aki-Chan While his situation did mature him up to some of life’s aspects; I don’t believe it should automatically accumulate his opinion to that level of knowledge (bc that needs actual experience in which he simply doesn’t have as he is just starting to discover things).